ON the one hand, “Black Book” has the artiness of subtitles, the dramatic weight of history, and the desperate heroics of Jews hiding from Nazis. On the other hand, it has Paul Verhoeven.

Verhoeven, the director who generally aims for awfulness and succeeds gloriously (“Robocop,” “Showgirls,” “Basic Instinct,” “Starship Troopers”), has grown a (slight) yen for quality. In press notes, he murmurs of David Lean, but “Lawrence of Arabia” was notable for its lack of scenes featuring a naked woman getting bathed with a bucket of human waste.

In the closing months of WWII, a Jewish songstress named Rachel Stein, who is hiding in a Dutch farmhouse with a large family, finds the house (and, presumably, her saviors) blown up by an errant bomb. “That’s my hiding place!” is her only complaint. Sentimental she is not.

Soon, she is posing as a gentile and sleeping with a Nazi officer while spying on him, aiding the Dutch resistance. She is trying to figure out who ratted out a boatful of Jews trying to flee to Belgium, which had already been liberated, but who were instead caught and killed by SS troops. Rachel was on the boat, but escaped James Bond-style.

There is much double- and triple-crossing as Rachel pulls off a series of narrow escapes. But Verhoeven is not quite taking things seriously. Only he would slaver over Rachel as she dyes her pubic hair to complete her disguise, and when Rachel’s Nazi lover figures out that she’s Jewish, she responds Sharon Stone-ishly by placing his hands on her bare breasts and asking, “Are these Jewish?”